Un of Tenn | Math Department

Seminars and Colloquiums
for 2010-2011

Week of March 7, 2011

Speaker:
Mr. Fei Xing, Monday
Ms. Sarah White, Tuesday
Professor James Conant, Tuesday
Professor Carl Sundberg, Wednesday
Professor Ohannes Karakashian, Wednesday
Professor Tim Schulze, Thursday
Professors Conant, Plaut, Stephenson, Friday

If you are interested in giving or arranging a talk for one of our seminars or colloquiums,
please review our calendar.

If you have questions, or a date you would like to confirm, please contact Dr. Fernando Schwartz.

Monday, March 7

PROBABILITY SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 114
SPEAKER: Mr. Fei Xing
TITLE: "Almost sure asymptotics for random motion of Poisson potential (II)"
ABSTRACT: In this talk, I will present the main tools to reach the large deviation principle result for the positive exponential moment which we discussed in last week's talk. If time allows, I will also present the corresponding LDP result with respect to Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process of Poisson potential.

Tuesday, March 8

MATH BIOLOGY SEMINAR
TIME: 9:45 – 10:35 a.m.
ROOM: NIMBioS Classroom
SPEAKER: Sarah White
TOPIC: Continuous-Time Birth and Death Chains, part II

TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
TIME: 3:40 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres Hall 406
SPEAKER: Prof. James Conant
TITLE: "An Introduction to Morse Theory"
ABSTRACT: Morse theory is a fundamental tool for analyzing the topology of smooth manifolds, and in particular was used by Stephen Smale to prove the Poincare conjecture in dimensions 5 and higher. We will sketch an introduction to Morse theory and, if time permits, give an idea of how Smale's proof goes.

Wednesday, March 9

ANALYSIS SEMINAR
TIME: 3:35 - 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 114
SPEAKER: Professor Carl Sundberg
TOPIC: “The Dirac - Kadison/Singer – Paving – Feichtinger – Seip – Sundberg Conjectures” Part 2
ABSTRACT: I’m not kidding about this. The same type of question has arisen in many different areas, such as Quantum Mechanics, C*-Algebra Theory, Frame Theory, and Function–Theoretic Operator Theory (notice that I have shamelessly added my own name to this list). I will discuss these questions and their interrelations.

APPLIED/COMPUTATIONAL MATH
TIME: 3:35 - 4:30 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 111
SPEAKER: Professor Ohannes Karakashian
TITLE: "Adaptive Methods for Elliptic PDEs", Part V

Thursday, March 10

JUNIOR COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 405
SPEAKER: Prof. Tim Schulze
TITLE: "The Mathematics of Poker and Bluffing"
ABSTRACT: In this talk we take a look at the game of poker. We quickly find that a complete analysis is not practical. Multiple players, multiple rounds of betting, multiple raises, and variable bet sizes combine to make the game intractable. We are able to make progress, however, if we restrict our attention to heads-up play with some simplified betting rules. We expand upon this basic situation to include some elements of the popular game of Texas Hold 'Em. One focus will be identifying the sets of hands we should bluff with.

Please come for pizza at 3:15 in Room 401.

Friday, March 11

MATHEMATICS MICRO COLLOQUIUM
TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m.
ROOM: Ayres 405
Micro-colloquium: Three short talks by Prof. Jim Conant, Prof. Conrad Plaut, and Prof. Ken Stephenson to highlight some of the research of UT's math department.

SPEAKER: Prof. Jim Conant
TITLE: TBA
ABSTRACT: TBA

SPEAKER: Prof. Conrad Plaut
TITLE: "The R-tree is the Mother of all Geodesic Spaces"
ABSTRACT: R-trees are the topologically simplest kind of geodesic space, and they appear in many places in mathematics, especially geometric group theory. I'll give the definitions and state the theorem due to and Valera Berestovskii and myself that makes my title more precise (Adv. Math. 224 (2010), no. 5, 1765–1783). The construction involves a kind of generalized covering map of geodesic spaces called a URL map, and the mapping from Mother R-tree is universal in the category of URL maps.

SPEAKER: Prof. Ken Stephenson
TITLE: "Flipp'n Circle Packings"
ABSTRACT: This talk will be very visual. I will be illustrating circle packings and manipulating them in real time by applying "edge flips". My goal is to understand the spontaneous geometry and to see if it can be applied to problems from distribution of points on the sphere to the distribution of carbon atoms in graphene sheets.

Please stop by for refreshments in Ayres 401 at 3:15 p.m.

Past notices:

winter break